To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.